


Butterflies

by Signe (oxoniensis)



Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:37:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxoniensis/pseuds/Signe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He's off his rocker, he is," Jenny says.  "But then you'd know that, wouldn't you?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Butterflies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sophieisgod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophieisgod/gifts).



> Set post season 2, so spoilers for the entire series so far. Thanks to my lovely volunteer beta.

"He's off his rocker, he is," Jenny says. "But then you'd know that, wouldn't you?"

Alice doesn't answer, just wanders around John's flat. She's barely spoken since she arrived, just picked stuff up and put it back down again, flicked through the pile of books on the sideboard. It looks aimless, but Alice doesn't strike Jenny as the kind of person who wastes time doing pointless things, so she's probably got a purpose. Jenny just doesn't know what it is.

"I'd kill for a cup of tea," Alice says eventually. "Americans make terrible tea, you know. They've simply no idea." She sighs, like she took the lack of decent tea over there as something personal, an insult.

Jenny didn't know. Jenny's never likely to go to America, or any of the other countries Alice has visited. People like her don't. People like Jenny end up in Basingstoke or Barnsley or some crummy suburb of Birmingham. If she survives that long. She might, now, with John looking out for her. If he doesn't get her killed. It could go either way, for all that he's promised he'll never let anyone hurt her. Mostly she feels safe these days, but some nights, when John's working late and the flat's empty, she gets scared. Not scared enough to go back to her mum's though, so that's something. Just, butterflies in her stomach nervous. She's trying to get over it, not let John down, be a proper flatmate who pays rent and doesn't cause trouble.

At any rate, she's good at making tea. "Sugar?" she asks, putting the kettle on.

Alice shakes her head. "I'm sweet enough," she says, and she's got this sly kind of smile that Jenny doesn't trust in the least but it's kind of, well—Jenny doesn't honestly know what it's like, but it makes her want to smile back, not just some ordinary throwaway grin, but the sort of smile she'd put on for the camera, for close-ups, only for real. Which is weird, because Jenny doesn't particularly go for birds. But Alice, she's something different all right.

Jenny makes two mugs of tea. She ought to get John some more mugs — he's only got these two, and one of them has a crack in it. Jenny remembers something about germs in cracks, but she reckons she's had worse in her mouth, so she has the cracked mug and holds out the decent one for Alice.

"Thank you," Alice says. She's still wearing her hat and coat, like she's not planning on staying long, but she's been here twenty minutes already. Jenny likes the coat — she's got an eye shadow that shade of pink, like the end of a sunset just before it gets dark. Or at least, she used to have, when she owned stuff. She's bought a few things lately, got her own drawer and a shelf in the bathroom, but nothing she couldn't pack in less than five minutes, and nothing she couldn't leave behind if she didn't have five minutes.

"So," Jenny starts, because the room feels warmer if they're talking, "did you kill anyone else while you were out of the country?" Alice laughs, and Jenny jumps to reassure her. "I wouldn't say anything. If you had, you know, killed someone else." A beat. "I killed a guy once." Her mouth is dry, so she takes a swig of tea. It's too hot to drink really, but it helps anyway. She still sometimes thinks she can hear the carpet squelch when she walks over the patch that had all the blood on it. She tries to walk around, unless John's looking. If he's there, she walks straight over it, so he doesn't know she still has nightmares about it.

"Really?" Alice says, like Jenny's more interesting than she expected, though Jenny knows John must have told her about it when he got Toby's grandmother off Jenny's back. "Was he horrid?"

Jenny nods. She doesn't like to think too much about just what a nasty piece of shit Toby was.

"In that case, I'm sure he deserved it. When they deserve it, well, it just has to be done," Alice says, as though she's talking about doing the dishes or something stupidly ordinary like that. "The question is," and she pauses for emphasis and lowers her voice, "did you get caught?"

Alice makes it sound like a test.

"Well, yeah, kinda. Except, not really." She's not doing a very good job of explaining. "John knows, but it was self defence, see? So he helped me. John's like that. Good at helping people. I didn't go to prison or nothing."

Alice ducks her head like she doesn't want Jenny to see her laughing, but she doesn't sound like she's laughing, and when she looks up, she's perfectly serious. "He does so like to help people," she says, but she doesn't look like she thinks it's a good thing or a bad thing particularly. She just looks fond.

Jenny nods, because that's John. He likes to get the bad guys and help the people who've been messed up by the bad guys. His job and hobby all rolled into one. "I'd offer you a biscuit," she says, "but I don't think we've got any." Jenny tried to stock the cupboards with something more than food that goes on toast once, but most of it went bad before they got around to using it. Take away is easier. She buys biscuits often enough, but they don't last long. Biscuits and milk and teabags, they get through them fast.

"That reminds me," Alice says, picking her bag up from the floor and fishing around in it. She pulls out a small package, wrapped in blue paper and silver ribbon, and puts it on the coffee table. It's obviously for John.

"He'll like that," Jenny says, though she feels a prick of jealousy that Alice can buy him fancy things — not that she has any clue what's in the package, but it's small, and in Jenny's experience that means something nice, something expensive — and she's just going to get him new mugs when she can afford them. But John deserves nice things. She smiles to show she's pleased Alice has brought him a present.

"How's Mark doing?" Alice asks. She still hasn't actually asked about John, where he is (working, obviously, because he doesn't do much else) or how he is (pretty messed up, but that's the same as usual). Jenny doesn't know if that means she's spoken to him lately, or if she's worked out how he is from poking around the flat — though how she'd manage that Jenny doesn't know, because there's nothing personal here at all — or if she doesn't care. No, it isn't that she doesn't care. Jenny's sure of that. She's good at spotting crushes or obsessions, or whatever it is when it's between a hot serial killer and a hot-if-he-weren't-so-old police officer. Alice is definitely obsessed with John. She cares. Maybe she just doesn't want to ask Jenny. Wants to see him for herself. Jenny can understand that.

She thinks about the question and shrugs. Mark seems pretty un-fucked up considering everything he's gone through. "Okay, I guess," she says. He comes round some evenings, but John usually goes out with him, so she doesn't see much of him. Mark's place is cosier than this flat, even if it is in a rubbish area. "Did he really tell you to kill that dirty cop?" Jenny asks. She's heard bits of the story of the guy who killed John's wife, Mark's girlfriend, but only scraps dropped into conversation that she's had to piece together and not enough to give her the whole story. They both clam up if she asks questions.

"Oh, yes," Alice says, leaning back on the sofa, arms spread out on the back of it. "He was magnificent. There's nothing quite like having someone at your shoulder begging you to pull the trigger." She shudders with pleasure, noisily, almost like she's having an orgasm. "It was hot," she says, and Jenny imagines her with a shotgun, _bam_ and the guy who fucked up John's life was dead. Yeah, that would be hot.

Killing Toby wasn't hot at all. It was scary and miserable and she'd been sure he was going to kill her. He nearly did. She could've done with Alice here then. Bam with a shotgun.

"You weren't scared? Not at all?" Jenny asks, remembering how her hands shook after, the way she couldn't quite get her breath.

"Oh, no," Alice breathes. "You can't be scared, or you'll act like scared people do, and that's when you get caught." It reminds Jenny of something John said to her over Toby's body. It's all a bit blurred with time, but she remembers him saying she had to act like she wasn't scared.

She could learn that from Alice, she thinks. How not to be scared.

Jenny finishes her tea and takes both mugs into the kitchen. Alice follows her, leaning in the doorway as Jenny swills them under the tap, leaves them to drain, and dries her hands. Alice is twirling her hair, but it doesn't make her look younger. It makes it hard for Jenny to look away, and she's sure Alice knows. "I don't know when John'll be back," Jenny says, hanging the hand towel over the oven handle. "We could go out, get a drink?" It'd beat hanging around in the flat. And there's something about Alice that makes Jenny want to know her better. She's dangerous, of course, but she's fascinating too.

Alice purses her lips and flicks at her bottom lip with her finger. There's something mesmerising about the action. Jenny holds her breath while Alice decides. "Why not?" Alice says eventually, and she smiles like a sunrise. "We can swap stories."

"Yeah, about what a weirdo John is," Jenny says, though she doesn't really think he's that much of a weirdo any more. Crazy, yeah, but not a weirdo. Or maybe she's just grown used to his brand of weird. "I like your hat," she adds. She had one a bit like it once, but it didn't suit her like it does Alice. She grabs her coat off the hook in the hallway.

Alice takes her arm as they head out together. "Nice makeup," she says, like she means it and isn't being all sarcastic and judgmental. It isn't Jenny's best — a metallic blue and pink on her eyes, a pink lipstick to match, and blue crackle varnish on her nails — but it makes her feel special. Like a butterfly. Bright and free and unafraid. Not boring.

"You ever made porn movies?" Jenny asks, because she doesn't think Alice is the sort of person who'd mind a question like that. And she doesn't want to be boring, not with Alice. Alice isn't the kind of person who puts up with boring people.

Alice halts outside the flat and leans in toward Jenny. "Not for public consumption," she whispers in Jenny's ear, and Jenny thinks that whatever an evening out with Alice will be like, it won't be boring.


End file.
